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Page 2
A woman reads the graces of a man at sight. His faults she cannot
thoroughly detect till she has been for years his wife. And his faults
are so much more serious a matter to her than hers to him!
I was thinking of this the day before the wedding. I had stepped in from
the kitchen to ask Mrs. Bird about the salad, when I came abruptly, at
the door of the sitting-room, upon as choice a picture as one is likely
to see.
The doors were open through the house, and the wind swept in and out. A
scarlet woodbine swung lazily back and forth beyond the window. Dimples
of light burned through it, dotting the carpet and the black-and-white
marbled oilcloth of the hall. Beyond, in the little front parlor, framed
in by the series of doorways, was Harrie, all in a cloud of white. It
floated about her with an idle, wavelike motion. She had a veil like
fretted pearls through which her tinted arm shone faintly, and the
shadow of a single scarlet leaf trembled through a curtain upon her
forehead.
Her mother, crying a little, as mothers will cry the day before the
wedding, was smoothing with tender touch a tiny crease upon the cloud; a
bridesmaid or two sat chattering on the floor; gloves, and favors, and
flowers, and bits of lace like hoar frost, lay scattered about; and the
whole was repictured and reflected and reshaded in the great
old-fashioned mirrors before which Harrie turned herself about.
It seemed a pity that Myron Sharpe should miss that, so I called him in
from the porch where he sat reading Stuart Mill on Liberty.
If you form your own opinion of a man who might spend a livelong
morning,--an October morning, quivering with color, alive with light,
sweet with the breath of dropping pines, soft with the caress of a wind
that had filtered through miles of sunshine,--and that the morning of
the day before his wedding,--reading Stuart Mill on Liberty,--I cannot
help it.
Harrie, turning suddenly, saw us,--met her lover's eyes, stood a moment
with lifted lashes and bright cheeks,--crept with a quick, impulsive
movement into her mother's arms, kissed her, and floated away up the
stairs.
"It's a perfect fit," said Mrs. Bird; coming out with one corner of a
very dingy handkerchief--somebody had just used it to dust the Parian
vases--at her eyes.
And though, to be sure, it was none of my business, I caught myself
saying, under my breath,--
"It's a fit for life; for a _life_, Dr. Sharpe."
Dr. Sharpe smiled serenely. He was very much in love with the little
pink-and-white cloud that had just fluttered up the stairs. If it had
been drifting to him for the venture of twenty lifetimes, he would have
felt no doubt of the "fit."
Nor, I am sure, would Harrie. She stole out to him that evening after
the bridal finery was put away, and knelt at his feet in her plain
little muslin dress, her hair all out of crimp, slipping from her net
behind her ears,--Harrie's ears were very small, and shaded off in the
colors of a pale apple-blossom,--up-turning her flushed and weary face.
"Put away the book, please, Myron."
Myron put away the book (somebody on Bilious Affections), and looked for
a moment without speaking at the up-turned face.
Dr. Sharpe had spasms of distrusting himself amazingly; perhaps most men
have,--and ought to. His face grew grave just then. That little girl's
clear eyes shone upon him like the lights upon an altar. In very
unworthiness of soul he would have put the shoes from off his feet. The
ground on which he trod was holy.
When he spoke to the child, it was in a whisper:--
"Harrie, are you afraid of me? I know I am not very good."
And Harrie, kneeling with the shadows of the scarlet leaves upon her
hair, said softly, "How could I be afraid of you? It is _I_ who am not
good."
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